Anal Stage and Psychoanalytic Theory
sychologists have proposed various theories of personality to attempt to explain similarities and provide reasons for differences in personalities. The following approaches - psychoanalytic, humanistic, social learning, type and trait theories of personality will be outlined highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses for each theory.
Sigmund Freud was the main proponent of Psychoanalytic Theory but neo-Freudians such as Jung, Adler, Erikson and Horney are also major contributors. Freud believed that every personality has an unconscious component and that childhood experiences, even if not consciously recalled, continue to influence people's behaviours. The psychoanalytic theory states that a personality has three parts – the id, the ego, and the superego which serve to regulate instinctual energies and shapes our personalities. The dynamic unconscious is populated by anxiety-provoking drives ideas which have been exiled from conscious awareness by psychological defence mechanisms such as repression. Defence mechanisms are the domain of the Ego, the portion of personality concerned with mediating between external reality and the internal reality. They operate to prevent the experience of intense conscious anxiety caused by a conflict between base drives and the moral aspect of the psyche, the Superego. Freud suggested that personality is formed during the first six years of life known as the Psychosexual Stages of Development. The maturing child supposedly experiences a number of discrete and biologically-motivated psychosexual phases, during which their essential sexual energies (the libido) become invested in particular areas of the body. So, the Id-dominated oral stage, where sensual pleasure is derived via the mouth, gives way to the anal stage and the birth of the Ego. This is followed by the phallic stage, during which the Oedipus complex (children aspire to be the partner of the opposite-sex parent) occurs. Resolution of this complex results in the
Sigmund Freud was the main proponent of Psychoanalytic Theory but neo-Freudians such as Jung, Adler, Erikson and Horney are also major contributors. Freud believed that every personality has an unconscious component and that childhood experiences, even if not consciously recalled, continue to influence people's behaviours. The psychoanalytic theory states that a personality has three parts – the id, the ego, and the superego which serve to regulate instinctual energies and shapes our personalities. The dynamic unconscious is populated by anxiety-provoking drives ideas which have been exiled from conscious awareness by psychological defence mechanisms such as repression. Defence mechanisms are the domain of the Ego, the portion of personality concerned with mediating between external reality and the internal reality. They operate to prevent the experience of intense conscious anxiety caused by a conflict between base drives and the moral aspect of the psyche, the Superego. Freud suggested that personality is formed during the first six years of life known as the Psychosexual Stages of Development. The maturing child supposedly experiences a number of discrete and biologically-motivated psychosexual phases, during which their essential sexual energies (the libido) become invested in particular areas of the body. So, the Id-dominated oral stage, where sensual pleasure is derived via the mouth, gives way to the anal stage and the birth of the Ego. This is followed by the phallic stage, during which the Oedipus complex (children aspire to be the partner of the opposite-sex parent) occurs. Resolution of this complex results in the